Obama event, jokes draw McCain rebuke

12/31/12 4:19 PM EST

The crowd was nothing if not adoring. ("Thank you for having us!" Two standing ovations.) And the president did seem in a good mood. (Cracking jokes about showing up at an audience member's house to ring in the new year.)

But the event meant to re-iterate his position and prod members of Congress to agree to a deal that was "within sight" to avert the fiscal cliff did not win a lot of fans in Congress.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for one, took to the Senate floor and slammed the president for "antagonizing" Republicans during a White House event "with that group of people that he was talking to who were laughing and cheering and applauding as we are on the brink of this, of this collapse."

The audience members, billed by the White House as "middle-class Americans," were drawn from Obama supporters who responded to the White House's #my2k hashtag campaign and tweeted what a $2,000 tax hike would mean to them. That's the increase a typical family of four will see if the nation goes over the cliff. Being invited to the White House based on a tweet, it would seem, doesn't make for a dour audience.